Chapter 13

— Tobias

"It's so good to see you!" Tori wraps me in her embrace, her eyes reflecting her joy.

"Same here, you looks great!" I pull away, holding her forearms loosely in my hands. Her limbs are much more fragile than when I last saw her, and she seems to finally be aging after all these years.

"Now, who is this little guy?" She gets down on her knees to be eye level with Thomas. He shyly clings to my leg, his face hiding in the back of my thigh.
"This is Thomas," I rest my hand on my son's blonde hair, ruffling it lightly.

"Hey there, Thomas! I'm your Aunt Tori," she smiles softly.

"Can you tell Aunt Tori how old you are Tom?"

"Three!" He suddenly is no longer shy, putting up three fingers and smiling, his other hand still holding onto my leg.

I look over at Tris to see her smiling on the couch. Her face still screams exhaustion, but her mood clearly has changed since this morning.

Tori stands back up with the help of the couch and brushes off her pants. I notice George isn't here like Amar said he would be, but I decide not to question it.

Tori eases herself into the chair to the left of the television, Indy trotting over to greet her once again.

"I was surprised to see this old guy still kicking too, huh Indiana." She playfully ruffles the fur on the top of his head with both her hands, causing him to snort playfully. He sits next to her, clearly enjoying a new person to pet and pay attention to him.

I sit down next to Tris on the couch, my hand wrapping around her waist as my lips find her temple. She sighs, physically relaxing as Tori begins sharing her journey with us.

"I felt so bad when I left. I knew I wasn't going to easily be able to contact any of you, and it did break my heart every day not knowing how everyone was. Traveling, it was what I needed. It's just been so hard coming back and seeing what I've missed. I mean, you two got married and have this little guy, Zeke and Shauna basically never leave their quarantined house of toddler germs, and the attack from New York—"

"Tori, it's not your fault," Tris cuts her off. "You did what was best for you, and none of us are mad at you for it. Now stop feeling guilty and tell us about all the fun you had." She laughs at the end, making me smile.

I didn't realize how long it's been since I've heard Tris laugh, even lightly.
These past few weeks out of the hospital have been hard for her. Even when she was in the hospital she never was happy.

"The car I took ran on sunlight energy, so I didn't have to worry about gas. I ended up following a road that went North through Wisconsin, then went West," Tori begins her story. She shows us some pictures she took passing through Milwaukee, then of a body of water that she pulled over on a bridge to take pictures of.
The grasslands in the picture are so green compared to the land here in Chicago.
It's beautiful.

She tells how she picked up an old friend of hers that moved to Milwaukee after the faction war. This friend traveled with her for these past few years, but upon reaching their final destination before journeying home this friend decided to stay in this city called Denver.

She explains this before explaining how they got to Denver, because Tris was curious of the other woman who was in the pictures with Tori.

"This area was once called North Dakota, then the area below it was called South Dakota. Pretty creative, huh?" She chuckles and I smile. "Now they're just one territory called "Dakota", and it's a huge area with so much to see. We spent a whole year there living in a smaller city that didn't have a name."
She goes on to explain a few of the local people they met and lived by that year. She recalled that they all had very dark hair but the brightest personalities. One of them continued to travel with them to the southern part of the area.

"You've got to look at this, it's amazing." She shows us a picture of what looks like massive faces carved into stone. "They've been eroding over the years, but they once were full faces. There actually was four of them, but after a large earthquake the one to the far end was completely destroyed."
Tris gasps when seeing the picture. I can't blame her because the image is stunning and I never have seen something like that in my life.

"Who were they?" Tris asks. "Did you find out?"

"The one that fell off to the far left was named George Washington, this one now furthest to the left was Thomas Jefferson—"

"Yeah?" Thomas looks up from his toys upon hearing his name. We all burst out laughing and Thomas looks confused.

"Come look at this, Tom," Tori waves him over and he runs to us. "This guy right here has the same name as you!" She points to the stone face in the picture.

"That doesn't look like me!" Thomas giggles. "That's a rock!"

"Yeah," Tori agrees, laughter in her voice. "But that rock was made into a face to honor the person that Thomas once was." She tried to explain, but Tom doesn't understand. He sits down on the floor next to Indy, busying himself on the lines in the carpet.

"I can't remember this one's name," she shakes her head. "But this one who has almost disappeared from erosion was named Abraham... gosh, what was his last name?" She shakes her head in frustration.

"Well," she shrugs. "It'll come to me later," she chuckles, returning to the story.

From the faces carved into the stone, they three women traveled South just following whatever roads they found. They slept in the car, or sometimes they found shelter in small functioning cities along the way.

"It's amazing that with all that land, no one chooses to claim it," I remark and Tris nods in agreement.

"I guess it's hard to get water out to this area," Tori explains. "There use to be more bodies of water before the Earth's temperature began to rise, and eventually radiation also became a factor in people needing a water source. It's not easy to get water into these locations, so it's hard to have people live out here."

"So did you guys have a supply of water in the car?" Tris asks and Tori nods.

"A lot of the supply comes from run off of snow in the winter months. Smaller cities containing a family or two would have large rain bails and collect water that way, but even then there would be periods of drought where they would worry about needing to travel to stay alive." Tori explains.

"The direction we traveled ended up going South and we found a large city named Denver. It was the biggest city we came across this whole trip, and it also seemed to function like any normal city. No factions like Chicago, no druggies like Milwaukee, no alpha males like New York, and no intention to bully smaller cities like the Bureau. I almost didn't want to leave," she admits at the end, longing in her voice.

They stayed in that city, Denver, for two years. Their form of government made it that the women could come and go as they pleased, no fence like Chicago, and they did not need to work to keep their stay.

It doesn't make sense how that actually worked and how the city didn't end up in uproar and war because of this loose form of government, but it seemed to work for them.

Her friend from Milwaukee did choose to stay in this city and become a legal citizen. Once their time came to begin their journey home, Tori and the woman they picked up before seeing the stone faces bid their goodbyes and traveled back to that other woman's home town.

Tori had many scenic pictures of her way home. One was a beautiful field of these massive and tall yellow flowers called sunflowers, and another picture was of these massive mountains with white tops covered in snow. She traveled home mostly alone, her old friend choosing to stay back while her new friend returned to her home that was still thousands of miles away from Chicago.

"It was a peaceful time," she recalls. "Just me and the road. I was able to just reflect on my life, what I've done, and now where I've been. I'll be honest when I say it's so nice to be home, but I'm not sure how long I will stay. This city just always has so much tension, and I didn't realize how severe it was until I left that tension. I want to relax here for a little while, that's for sure, but I can't imagine seeing myself stay here forever when there is so much out there to see." Her voice is firm with strong emotion and I can't help but blame her.

Maybe one day Tris and I could travel too, of course, only if she wanted to.
I don't know how we would travel with a family, though. We both have expressed our want for a family, but I don't know how we would travel and have a family at the same time.
Tris's whole family is in Chicago, and so is my mother. Both of our lives have only ever been here, and I'm not sure I would want to leave this behind.
Of course, this isn't even something for us to currently think about.
For now, our lives are here.

+   +   +

Tori hung around all afternoon and stayed for dinner. She wanted to hear everything about us, from little details of Tris's hospital stays to the day Thomas was born. She clearly mourned missing each birthday, each holiday, and each marriage, but we continued to express our jealousy of the amazing experience she had traveling.
We go through our nightly routine like a well oiled machine. Tris showers, I bathe Thomas, put him in his pajamas, Tris tucks him in and reads him a story while I shower, then I say goodnight to him and join her in bed.

She curls into my side, yawning as she closes her eyes lightly. I sigh, wrapping my arm around her and holding her close.

"How's your pain?" I ask, feeling like I just need to know.

"It's worst in the morning," she mumbles. "Or when I try to sleep. Everything just painfully stiffens, and I feel like walking fixes it even though it doesn't."

Now it is my turn to yawn, resting my cheek on her hair. "I love you."

She opens her eyes, moving her head up to have her lips meet my chin. She lightly presses a kiss to the skin she can reach, then returns her head to my chest.

Deep down I feel like things are going to be better soon.
I don't know why I feel this way, but I just do.

Boy, do I hope this feeling comes true.